Terrorbird

An Odd Nosdam record is something more than music. David P. Madson's albums are collections of wordless short stories and scenes, intricately woven audio scrapbooks that buzz with singular experience as lived through the eyes and ears of one very electric human conduit. Whereas 2005's dense and gorgeous Burner was built amongst bad relationships, nasty headspaces and East Oakland situations, Level Live Wires is the distinct product of inspiration, bizarre happenstance and wonder lived out in a series of bright moments brought together
under the roof of a West Berkeley cottage. Here 8-track cassettes, samplers, synths and Dictaphones, lost records and found sounds, field recordings and happy accidents are brought to stirring life by our humble collagist.

Level Live Wires is announced by a rolling dub bump and a windy choral drone courtesy of "On," and confirmed with the surging slow dance of "Kill Tone." Tiny loops, chirping birds and a crunched harp melody create a pleasantly uneven aural landscape that soon shifts over a swell of bass. The song becomes a swirling ballet of syncopated sound: punched sampler drums, Dee Kesler's slow-grinding guitar, echoing voices, and a rapid line of barroom piano (Why's Doug McDiarmid).

Further along, "Freakout 3" crash-lands with a heavy burst of sludgy doom. Through a building ball of aural white light, David's voice trickles in via Dictaphone during a President's Day gang shooting outside of his old Oakland Victorian, but it's the speaker-shattering cry of Chris Adams that leads the heavy bass and building fuzz onward. "Fat Hooks" lifts listeners skyward with an airy composition of turntable bump, rich organ and soaring voice (Jessica Bailiff). And "The Kill Tone Two" returns to the lo-bit harp progression and a busted-up break- beat, but adds live violin and voice (TVotR's Tunde Adebimpe and Why's Yoni Wolf) to create a rolling epic.

Then comes the chef d'oeuvre, "Burner." A window slides open, a car horn blurts, and flames rage as a freshly abandoned Ford Explorer is caught on tape exploding in front of David's ex Oakland digs. The warping horn becomes the tonal base of the song, and the sharp blasts inspire sporadic but controlled bursts of heavy drum. Like "Freakout 3," the song was originally intended for Burner, but the gravity of its origins were stultifying. After three years of work, David turned to one of his musical idols, Chris Adams, and halfway through the song, the Hood architect can be heard, sawing at the base with violin and singing ghostly etherea overtop. When "Burner" breaks, we're back at the burning car, alone and surrounded by pitch black.

That Nosdam is as fascinated with these odd moments as the rest of us are is what gives Level Live Wires its enveloping draw. What could have become mere memory or static sound is instead given blood and legs. The album's closing triptych offers an appropriate end. "Up in Flames" returns to the clouds on the back of a bubbly reggae bassline, while piano and Jel's pounding drums get pulled into a mechanical tornado (David mashing his 8-track cassette while transferring the base loop onto computer). "Slight Return" slows down and stretches out the
crux harp melody in reverse, and "Off" gives us a glorious wash of tone and synth to drift out on. Also included with Level Live Wires' first pressing is a bonus disc of isolated sonics-a fine ambient EP in its own right-that allows listeners to hear the album's underpinnings from Odd Nosdam's peerless perspective. Â

Which is, of course, the view we've enjoyed from Level Live Wire's very
beginning.